A progressive Chicago Alderwoman, Maria Hadden, faced widespread backlash after suggesting in a Fox 32 Chicago interview that the murder of 18-year-old Loyola University student Sheridan Gorman was a “wrong place, wrong time” incident where the victim and friends may have unintentionally “startled” the shooter.
The comments, made shortly after the tragic shooting, drew outrage on social media for appearing to blame the victim and downplay crime concerns, and so a great many conservative critics condemned the remarks as insensitive and reflective of Democratic attitudes toward crime. Gorman’s family rejected the framing, emphasizing the deliberate loss of their daughter’s future and warning against desensitization to violence.
In her sickening comments, Alderwoman Maria Hadden claimed, rambling and minimizing the horrific nature of this slaying, “The kids were out doing normal, normal things people do in the neighborhood. And it sounds like this might have been a wrong place, wrong time, running into a person who had a gun.”
Continuing to minimize the sickening crime, the progressive Chicago official alleged that the fault might have been on the part of the slain college kid, saying, “They might have startled this person at the end of the pier unintentionally. But that’s all we know.” As could be expected, that prompted an instant backlash.
Responding to these comments, Gorman’s family stated, “What happened to Sheridan cannot be reduced to the idea of someone being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is not an abstraction. This is the loss of a daughter. The loss of a sister. The loss of a future filled with milestones that will now never come. Our family is forever changed.”
Still irate, the family added, “We cannot accept a world where moments like this become something people grow used to. We cannot allow ourselves to become desensitized to violence. When we begin to accept these tragedies as inevitable, we all become vulnerable to them. Apathy is not harmless—it allows these moments to repeat,” arguing that the slain student “deserved the future that was stolen from her.”
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Reacting to the scandal, Rafael Mangual, of the Manhattan Institute, said, “Unbelievable. Perhaps these politicians can put out a comprehensive list of the places we should avoid and the times we should avoid them so as not to get shot to death by strangers.”
A local journalist said, “Imagine being an alderman, having a college freshman murdered in your ward, and, before the suspect is even identified, posting a video in which you brainstorm an excuse that maybe the victim ‘startled’ the guy who killed her. God Almighty.”
Vickie Paladino, a New York City Republican Councilwoman, posted, “This is how most Democrats think about crime, she’s just saying it out loud. They have no interest in taking any kind of action, because they don’t think any of it is a big deal. Criminals have a right to be criminals, don’t get in their way, and who are we to judge. That’s what we’re up against here.”
Former Trump campaign deputy communications director, Caroline Sunshine, argued much the same thing in condemning the alderwoman, stating, “The only person who was in the ‘wrong place at the wrong time’ was the illegal immigrant who should have never been allowed into our country.”
Featured image from embedded video